The Battle for Planet Earth
Reading the views presented here might lead one to believe that there are two kinds of human beings. One being invests his energy and intellect in shaping events and influencing outcomes that satisfy his personal advantage without regard for the affects of these choices on either the world or the people with whom he shares it. The other kind of being remains a servant and supplicant to those acknowledged as comprising the alternate/ “superior” variety of Homo sapiens.
One a “go-getter”, a person accepting the challenges of wresting an existence from a hostile and often-pernicious dynamic through perseverance insight and rational consideration of the nature of his existence, unprepared to allow the infection of self-delusion to divert the pursuit of power wealth and control. “Self-interest” is this person’s highest virtue and calling while all others are subject to the will of this individual. Enforced through violence when necessary but patient as well, satisfied to allow the seeds of doubt sown through suggestion and cultivated prejudices to grow in the minds of “lesser” men.
When Rene Descartes proposed that existence is a function of thought he was careful (given the times of his “science”…) to offer homage to the “church” and belief structures of that period that held the people of the “civilized world” hostage to mysticism and fantasy. Mysticism and the fantastic certainly “existed” for ancient man and the social organizing structures he established to ensure survival of the (tribe) species. Human sacrifice to “god” and/or “gods” is acknowledged as historical phenomena across the face of this planet.
As equally divisive a concept as a supernatural perfect creator being responsible for the existence of the universe was the notion advanced by “learned-men” who described the nature of human beings as arising from the influences and dynamics of the subconscious, the “ego” and the “id”.
Organisms “driven” by impulse and instinct to behave instead of through acknowledgement of their direct/contact and intimate interrelationship with the extant perceivable environment of their existence, but rather as slaves to appetites and emotions simmering in some never-never region of the subconscious “below” the conscious level. Forever slave to the same hobgoblins and fantasies as Pope Gregory and Dante Alighieri describe in their screeds on the nature of the human beast.
Lust greed gluttony sloth envy wrath and pride.
If we are prepared to acknowledge that we are in fact “driven” by forces or impulses of which we are neither aware nor can control, how are these impulses and influences manifest in our human expression, our human “mosaic”?
Lust….self-indulgent sexual desire.
Forbes Magazine (“bottom-liners” of the first order) suggests that porn-industry estimates of the revenues involved in satisfying mankind’s appetite for salacious entertainment are grossly exaggerated. This pipeline of greed for greed’s-sake suggests that something on the order of a mere 4 billion dollars a year is closer to the actual revenues. This may well be accurate but in a forum where conservatism is next to godliness, there’s always the prudent necessity of abundant latitude applied to anything offered as “fact” by a publication sculpted and engineered to legitimize greed as a noble pursuit.
We wouldn’t look to meteorologists for guidance in considering and understanding human anatomy and we would be fools to imagine that economists have anything beyond the metrics of balance sheets and financial statements as their guide to encapsulating the permutations and capricious excesses of the species they regard as ledger headings and statistical phenomena. This is one of a multitude of convenient “blind-spots” judiciously ignored by the “bottom-line” variety of bottom-feeders.
It’s unfortunate (my opinion) that greater participation and indeed greater concentration on the topic of “intent” wasn’t and isn’t given by people who while appearing to be interested in understanding their world and the maelstrom of dynamics that shape it, remain comfortably separate from an understanding of the impulses shaped by their appetites…by “intent”.
It’s difficult for instance to divorce the “intent” behind presentation of the allure of automobile “romance” from the sexually provocative images and content employed to whet the appetites of a post-adolescent consumer society.
If in fact life mimics art, Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the dashboard lights”…sums up the “intent” behind not only automobile advertising but a plethora of weight-loss, baldness remedies, cosmetics and “male enhancements” that drive the greed-machine of the higher-order Homo sapiens that claim dominance over the rabble.
Greed: “Excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves.”
Who is greedier, the “nine-to-fiver”, the wannabe….who taking advantage of the profit-motivated sub-prime mortgage scheme purchases a house far larger and significantly more expensive to heat and maintain than a more reasonable…more “suited to one’s needs” purchase to provide a home and shelter for his/her ‘loved-ones’….or the individual who salivating after some potential windfall profit-taking as the “real-estate market rises”….brings collapse and mayhem to the “American Dream”….?
Who’s greedier the mortgage con-men and bankers or the conditioned to “excess and Xtreme” consumer?
Who believes that the brand and model of your “car” captures and radiates your personal charisma, or your “power” and “manliness” or your “sexuality and your “prosperity” to the world for all those lesser beings driving the disposable junk of a manufacturing industry that employs planned-obsolescence and unnecessarily complicated mechanics and “advanced-systems” that contribute to the delusion that you drive…..the mobile essence of the American Dream?
Parked behind that shiny “not so much as a scratch on the paint-job” four-wheel drive…off-road testament to the adventurous spirit…the safety-consciousness of the urbanite ahead of you in the drive-through eatery or coffee-shop assembly-line mentality that while idling belches out tons of carbon on a planet filthy from compass point to compass point with the excesses of an unevolved and self-destructive delusional moron who embraces the ludicrousness of the idea that the image presented by his “car” is emblematic of his personality and his “values”….. pride sloth and gluttony with a side-order of greed…..
Who’s responsible….the smarmy automobile salesman who makes your failure to adequately safeguard your family in an over-weight-gas-guzzling juggernaut the lever of guilt that’s needed to influence you to pay for his Lexus or his vacation in the Barbados….. or your own willing victim-mentality that’s already surrendered to the idea that you’re incapable of thinking for yourself?
Maybe you’re getting the picture….
If there are only two types of people in the world…..the people who abrogate their responsibility to think for themselves are the people most responsible for creating this dichotomy.
The world created by the willingly ignorant, capitalized upon by those accepting the mantle of authority from a species too stupid to recognize the precedents to its own extinction.